Noorani tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair in irritation. When she had originally taken over after the High Priest choked to death on a stupid grape, she had thought to change the Brotherhood into her idealized version of what it should be. Instead of an organization run by base criminal elements.
She hadn’t originally desired the top spot, but she couldn’t afford to let any of the other idiots take over. She would have preferred to resurrect the High Priest. But he had that defensive magic on him from Apolon. The idiot sealed his own fate and his body was reduced to ash when she tried to bring him back. Some blamed her for his death but others saw it as a good sign.
As for the issues within the Brotherhood, there wasn’t much she could do at first. The corruption that began with the High Priest was so ingrained into the Brotherhood’s structure that to remove it was to start from scratch. That simply wasn’t an option. The Brotherhood forces would have cast her out long before she was able to succeed with that type of plan. Too many of them were more than happy with the status quo, and denying them that would turn them against her. That didn’t stop her from slowly trying to change things though.
Over the years, she had amassed a small but rather loyal following of chosen thanks to some backroom dealing and promises. Only a few key positions within the order were under her control but it was a start. Noorani held no illusions that the people that were loyal to her cause actually liked her, but they would work with her all the same. At least as long as their goals were aligned.
Her biggest proponents were the chosen. Specifically, the ones added to the Brotherhood after the High Priest kicked the bucket. It was a major win for her to get so many of the chosen on her side. The wasteland had very few chosen to begin with. She estimated one in two thousand of these people had a calling. Compared to the ooraki who had a one in ten chance for a calling. The disparity had been a shocking surprise. Then again, these people and their human counterparts seemed to have stronger callings overall.
She couldn’t lambast the Order entirely, the Brotherhood did do one thing very well. They forcefully conscripted anyone with a calling that they came across, even if they weren’t originally from this zone. It was originally intended to deny any other organization the opportunity to stand against them. Those that refused to join, disappeared.
It was a shrewd yet effective tactic to keep the rest of the populace servile. One she would keep in place if she ever managed to turn the Brotherhood into a proper organization instead of a group of raiders and criminals pretending to be a holy organization.
She had to give the former High Priest credit for convincing people that he was no longer a well-known outlaw and instead served as the mouthpiece for some ancient deity. A deity who was just another type of hum who just so happened to have a middle name that was similar enough to old scriptures that it was plausible. And let's not forget having a handy set of healing abilities and buffs. It was too bad the man wasn’t a mage. If he was, she could learn his spells and be rid of the tiresome man.
The reason the High Priest had been so successful was due to his peculiar ability as a chosen. He called it his golden tongue. It never had any effect on her when she was undead, but he had tried to use it on her once she revived herself. But she was immune to the man thanks to her ooraki heritage. The man’s powers weren’t mind control, not truly. His ability allowed him to slowly change people's opinions of him until their thoughts and ideals became more aligned. Thus giving him power over them.
It was a subtle power but not much different than the charisma a cult leader might possess. The difference was this power extended through his priests to a smaller extent. She had first witnessed this phenomenon when she went to trade at Isaiah’s village. And even with the man now dead, his power still resonated through the priests. She had taken a grip on that and used them to extend the influence of the Brotherhood to unseen heights.
That wasn’t why she was annoyed today though. She was annoyed by this latest report. Some unknown force had raided eight villages and cities along the great river. But the only thing they had done was kill members of the Brotherhood or any civilians that may have been unfortunate enough to be there during the attack.
There were also reports of bodies washing up along the river. It was causing people to grow uneasy, and demands that the Brotherhood do something about the attacks had been growing.
She laughed bitterly at that. How was she supposed to do something about attacks from multiple unknown forces? And the reports didn’t help. Some of the populace said it was angry river spirits but her favorite were the ones spouting monsters from local folklore as being responsible.
No, all of the evidence she had seen pointed to two separate groups of raiders working together. She had four forces of knights, all of which were chosen, riding up and down the river to locate these raiders and bring them to justice.
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Just this morning, one of those groups had returned with the heads of twelve well-known raiders. They had run across the group pillaging one of the attacked towns and put an end to it. That was one group down, but no sign of the second set of attackers.
To make the situation worse in the outer villages and towns, some of the priests had retreated into Apolonia. Supposedly fearing for their safety, while others doubled their guard. Noorani was fine with issuing them more guards. It meant the priests would owe her one. But she couldn’t have priests abandoning their towns or all of her hard work over the last eight years would come undone.
She wished she still had Norman's grimoire so she might question the dead. But she had only kept a few of the more useful spells from the book. The rest of the spells she handed off to an intermediary. His job was to locate other necromancers and offer them a copy of the book for whatever he could get from it. None of the necromancers her man had found had turned the offer down. Already completed spells were rare to come by.
By doing this she was farming out the book in hopes that other necromancers could improve upon the magic and spells within. Then she could steal them for herself. What the necromancers didn’t know was that the books allowed her to spy on them whenever she wished. It wasn’t perfect though, so she had to spend an inordinate amount of time learning any of the spells by watching the necromancer in question. It was rare that she was able to get a glimpse into the books that they held onto.
What she learned was that none of the necromancers her intermediary had found were worth a damn. Sure they came up with unique twists on some of the magic, but not a single one had created their own spell from the information contained within the book. She almost wished Norman was still alive. At least that man had pushed the boundaries of his magic in seemingly impossible ways.
She did have high hopes for this newest necromancer that her man had located. The young man had already figured out the issue of controlling the undead, something Norman had struggled with for so long according to his own notes.
The information wasn’t all that useful to her since she didn’t use undead and had no reason to control them, but it was interesting all the same. The man also figured out how to reverse aging, which was much more useful to Noorani. After spying on the man for weeks, she had finally been able to recreate the spell herself. She no longer looked like her old and wrinkled self. She now sported her pert and perfect body from when she was barely an adult.
That little trick was one of the major reasons for her fervent group of chosen followers. Her first conversion was General Atalon, turning the man from a vocal opponent into a supporter.
The man had hated her on principle. But when she offered him his youth back, courtesy of Apolon for his years of dedicated service, the grey-haired man had agreed almost immediately.
Speaking of Atalon, the man strolled into the room looking rather dashing with his auburn hair, chiseled face, and immaculate white enameled armor. It was too bad that humans were so tall and that human men preferred to be the ones in control instead of letting their women control them as was natural. She preferred her men to be smaller like her ooraki kin and submissive.
“Priestess,” the man knelt and bowed before her chair. “I bring news.”
“I hope this is good news, Atalon. I have had enough bad news for the month.”
“We have located what we believe to be the second raider encampment. It's much larger than we anticipated from the signs in the villages. It also appears they have a dozen or so chosen on their side. We are going to need all four scouting groups to take them down without too many losses.”
Her annoyed tapping stopped and she leaned forward. “How is it that a group of malcontents this size has gone unnoticed for so long? And how have they managed to gather that many chosen to their banner?”
“We believe these are wasteland nomads, Priestess.”
“Bah!” she sat back in her chair. The wasteland nomads had been a thorn in her side since before she took over. Usually, their attacks weren’t quite so brazen as these but they would occasionally come storming out of the hard-packed desert to raid and pillage. They resented the cities and what the Brotherhood was trying to accomplish by unifying them. It was in direct opposition to their way of life, which was to constantly move around and live off the land, never staying in one place long.
“I thought all of the signs pointed to an enemy disappearing into boats, which is why I was told it was river raiders?”
“We believe that their goal was to throw us off. There are no other signs of any raiding groups near those cities. As for the group of raiders caught in the West. They could have been responsible for those deaths, but we believe they were just taking advantage of the chaos caused by the wasteland nomads.”
“Fine, gather your men and see that these nomads are dealt with once and for all. Leave the bodies as a warning for any other nomads that think they can cross us and get away with it.”
“At once, Priestess.”
***
The Brotherhood gathered its forces and descended upon the unsuspecting nomads, unaware that they were being watched the entire time.
These unseen watchers remained hidden as the two forces clashed in a battle that left all of the nomads dead, but a significant part of the Brotherhood forces dead as well. Long after the surviving Brotherhood forces gathered up their dead and rode off, a man in simple desert camouflage appeared at the edge of the once-thriving encampment. Soon another man appeared.
“They are long gone, we got time, Parker. Are you sure about this?”
Parker shrugged. “You saw how they fought against the Brotherhood. I think if Eugene were here, he would have said to grab them all up for that alone. Besides, Norman will be the deciding factor on whether or not these people will be converted. Gather the rest of our squad and tell them to get here as soon as possible. We are already behind schedule for meeting up with Eugene.”
The man saluted before zipping off across the hard desert landscape. Parker looked back at all the corpses of men, women, and even children and hoped he wasn’t making a huge mistake. All of the guards and most of the greykin probably knew about Norman’s reticence for converting children into greykin. But he might make an exception this time.